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Recombinant adeno-associated viral (AAV) vectors are known to safely and efficiently transduce the retina. Among the various AAV serotypes available, AAV2/5 and 2/8 are the most effective for gene transfer to photoreceptors (PR), which are the most relevant targets for gene therapy of inherited retinal degenerations. However, the search for novel AAV serotypes with improved PR transduction is ongoing. In this work we tested vectors derived from five AAV serotypes isolated from porcine tissues (referred to as porcine AAVs, four of which are newly identified) for their ability to transduce both the murine and the cone-enriched pig retina. Porcine AAV vectors expressing EGFP under the control of the CMV promoter were injected subretinally either in C57BL/6 mice or Large White pigs. The resulting retinal tropism was analyzed one month later on histological sections, while levels of PR transduction were assessed by Western blot. Our results show that all porcine AAV transduce murine and porcine retinal pigment epithelium and PR upon subretinal administration. AAV2/po1 and 2/po5 are the most efficient porcine AAVs for murine PR transduction and exhibit the strongest tropism for pig cone PR. The levels of PR transduction obtained with AAV2/po1 and 2/po5 are similar, albeit not superior, to those obtained with AAV2/5 and AAV2/8, which evinces AAV2/po1 and 2/po5 to be promising vectors for retinal gene therapy.

With the pace of scientific advancement accelerating rapidly, new methods are needed for experimental neuroscience to quickly and easily manipulate gene expression in the mouse brain. Here we describe a technique first introduced by Passini and Wolfe for direct intracranial delivery of virally-encoded transgenes into the neonatal mouse brain. In its most basic form, the procedure requires only an ice bucket and a microliter syringe. However, the protocol can also be adapted for use with stereotaxic frames to improve consistency for researchers new to the technique. The method relies on the ability of adeno-associated virus (AAV) to move freely from the cerebral ventricles into the brain parenchyma while the ependymal lining is still immature during the first 12-24 hr after birth. Intraventricular injection of AAV at this age results in widespread transduction of neurons throughout the brain. Expression begins within days of injection and persists for the lifetime of the animal. Viral titer can be adjusted to control the density of transduced neurons, while co-expression of a fluorescent protein provides a vital label of transduced cells. With the rising availability of viral core facilities to provide both off-the-shelf, pre-packaged reagents and custom viral preparation, this approach offers a timely method for manipulating gene expression in the mouse brain that is fast, easy, and far less expensive than traditional germline engineering.

Recombinant vectors based on a non-pathogenic human parvovirus, the adeno-associated virus 2 (AAV2) have been developed, and are currently in use in a number of gene therapy clinical trials. More recently, a number of additional AAV serotypes have also been isolated, which have been shown to exhibit selective tissue-tropism in various small and large animal models1. Of the 10 most commonly used AAV serotypes, AAV3 is by far the least efficient in transducing cells and tissues in vitro as well as in vivo.
However, in our recently published studies, we have documented that AAV3 vectors transduce human liver cancer - hepatoblastoma (HB) and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) - cell lines extremely efficiently because AAV3 utilizes human hepatocyte growth factor receptor as a cellular co-receptor for binding and entry in these cells2,3.
In this article, we describe the steps required to achieve high-efficiency transduction of human liver cancer cells by recombinant AAV3 vectors carrying a reporter gene. The use of recombinant AAV3 vectors carrying a therapeutic gene may eventually lead to the potential gene therapy of liver cancers in humans.

Adeno-associated viral (AAV) vectors represent some of the most potent and promising vehicles for therapeutic human gene transfer due to a unique combination of beneficial properties1. These include the apathogenicity of the underlying wildtype viruses and the highly advanced methodologies for production of high-titer, high-purity and clinical-grade recombinant vectors2. A further particular advantage of the AAV system over other viruses is the availability of a wealth of naturally occurring serotypes which differ in essential properties yet can all be easily engineered as vectors using a common protocol1,2. Moreover, a number of groups including our own have recently devised strategies to use these natural viruses as templates for the creation of synthetic vectors which either combine the assets of multiple input serotypes, or which enhance the properties of a single isolate. The respective technologies to achieve these goals are either DNA family shuffling3, i.e. fragmentation of various AAV capsid genes followed by their re-assembly based on partial homologies (typically >80% for most AAV serotypes), or peptide display4,5, i.e. insertion of usually seven amino acids into an exposed loop of the viral capsid where the peptide ideally mediates re-targeting to a desired cell type. For maximum success, both methods are applied in a high-throughput fashion whereby the protocols are up-scaled to yield libraries of around one million distinct capsid variants. Each clone is then comprised of a unique combination of numerous parental viruses (DNA shuffling approach) or contains a distinctive peptide within the same viral backbone (peptide display approach). The subsequent final step is iterative selection of such a library on target cells in order to enrich for individual capsids fulfilling most or ideally all requirements of the selection process. The latter preferably combines positive pressure, such as growth on a certain cell type of interest, with negative selection, for instance elimination of all capsids reacting with anti-AAV antibodies. This combination increases chances that synthetic capsids surviving the selection match the needs of the given application in a manner that would probably not have been found in any naturally occurring AAV isolate. Here, we focus on the DNA family shuffling method as the theoretically and experimentally more challenging of the two technologies. We describe and demonstrate all essential steps for the generation and selection of shuffled AAV libraries (Fig. 1), and then discuss the pitfalls and critical aspects of the protocols that one needs to be aware of in order to succeed with molecular AAV evolution.

Institutions: University of Aberdeen, School of Medical Sciences, University of New South Wales, Columbia University .

In recent years recombinant adeno-associated viral vectors (AAV) have become increasingly valuable for in vivo studies in animals, and are also currently being tested in human clinical trials. Wild-type AAV is a non-pathogenic member of the parvoviridae family and inherently replication-deficient. The broad transduction profile, low immune response as well as the strong and persistent transgene expression achieved with these vectors has made them a popular and versatile tool for in vitro and in vivo gene delivery. rAAVs can be easily and cheaply produced in the laboratory and, based on their favourable safety profile, are generally given a low safety classification. Here, we describe a method for the production and titering of chimeric rAAVs containing the capsid proteins of both AAV1 and AAV2. The use of these so-called chimeric vectors combines the benefits of both parental serotypes such as high titres stocks (AAV1) and purification by affinity chromatography (AAV2). These AAV serotypes are the best studied of all AAV serotypes, and individually have a broad infectivity pattern. The chimeric vectors described here should have the infectious properties of AAV1 and AAV2 and can thus be expected to infect a large range of tissues, including neurons, skeletal muscle, pancreas, kidney among others. The method described here uses heparin column purification, a method believed to give a higher viral titer and cleaner viral preparation than other purification methods, such as centrifugation through a caesium chloride gradient. Additionally, we describe how these vectors can be quickly and easily titered to give accurate reading of the number of infectious particles produced.

Intravenous injection is a clinically applicable manner to deliver therapeutics. For adult rodents and larger animals, intravenous injections are technically feasible and routine. However, some mouse models can have early onset of disease with a rapid progression that makes administration of potential therapies difficult. The temporal (or facial) vein is just anterior to the ear bud in mice and is clearly visible for the first two days after birth on either side of the head using a dissecting microscope. During this window, the temporal vein can be injected with volumes up to 50 μl. The injection is safe and well tolerated by both the pups and the dams. A typical injection procedure is completed within 1-2 min, after which the pup is returned to the home cage. By the third postnatal day the vein is difficult to visualize and the injection procedure becomes technically unreliable. This technique has been used for delivery of adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors, which in turn can provide almost body-wide, stable transgene expression for the life of the animal depending on the viral serotype chosen.

Microinjecting recombinant adenoassociated viral (rAAV) vectors expressing Cre recombinase into distinct mouse brain regions to selectively knockout genes of interest allows for enhanced temporally- and regionally-specific control of gene deletion, compared to existing methods. While conditional deletion can also be achieved by mating mice that express Cre recombinase under the control of specific gene promoters with mice carrying a floxed gene, stereotaxic microinjection allows for targeting of discrete brain areas at experimenter-determined time points of interest. In the context of cocaine conditioned place preference, and other cocaine behavioral paradigms such as self-administration or psychomotor sensitization that can involve withdrawal, extinction and/or reinstatement phases, this technique is particularly useful in exploring the unique contribution of target genes to these distinct phases of behavioral models of cocaine-induced plasticity. Specifically, this technique allows for selective ablation of target genes during discrete phases of a behavior to test their contribution to the behavior across time. Ultimately, this understanding allows for more targeted therapeutics that are best able to address the most potent risk factors that present themselves during each phase of addictive behavior.

The Drosophila eye is widely used as a model for studies of development and neuronal degeneration. With the powerful mitotic recombination technique, elegant genetic screens based on clonal analysis have led to the identification of signaling pathways involved in eye development and photoreceptor (PR) differentiation at larval stages. We describe here the Tomato/GFP-FLP/FRT method, which can be used for rapid clonal analysis in the eye of living adult Drosophila. Fluorescent photoreceptor cells are imaged with the cornea neutralization technique, on retinas with mosaic clones generated by flipase-mediated recombination. This method has several major advantages over classical histological sectioning of the retina: it can be used for high-throughput screening and has proved an effective method for identifying the factors regulating PR survival and function. It can be used for kinetic analyses of PR degeneration in the same living animal over several weeks, to demonstrate the requirement for specific genes for PR survival or function in the adult fly. This method is also useful for addressing cell autonomy issues in developmental mutants, such as those in which the establishment of planar cell polarity is affected.

Adenovirus (Ad) derived vectors have been widely used for short or long-term gene transfer, both for gene therapy and vaccine applications. Because of the frequent pre-existing immunity against the classically used human adenovirus type 5, canine adenovirus type 2 (CAV2) has been proposed as an alternative vector for human gene transfer. The well-characterized biology of CAV2, together with its ease of genetic manipulation, offer major advantages, notably for gene transfer into the central nervous system, or for inducing a wide range of protective immune responses, from humoral to cellular immunity. Nowadays, CAV2 represents one of the most appealing nonhuman adenovirus for use as a vaccine vector. This protocol describes a simple method to construct, produce and titer recombinant CAV2 vectors. After cloning the expression cassette of the gene of interest into a shuttle plasmid, the recombinant genomic plasmid is obtained by homologous recombination in the E. coli BJ5183 bacterial strain. The resulting genomic plasmid is then transfected into canine kidney cells expressing the complementing CAV2-E1 genes (DK-E1). A viral amplification enables the production of a large viral stock, which is purified by ultracentrifugation through cesium chloride gradients and desalted by dialysis. The resulting viral suspension routinely has a titer of over 1010 infectious particles per ml and can be directly administrated in vivo.

Induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells that result from the reprogramming of somatic cells to a pluripotent state by forced expression of defined factors are offering new opportunities for regenerative medicine. Such clinical applications of iPS cells have been limited so far, mainly due to the poor efficiency of the existing reprogramming methodologies and the risk of the generated iPS cells to form tumors upon implantation.
We hypothesized that the reprogramming of somatic cells towards pluripotency could be achieved in vivo by gene transfer of reprogramming factors. In order to efficiently reprogram cells in vivo, high levels of the Yamanaka (OKSM) transcription factors need to be expressed at the target tissue. This can be achieved by using different viral or nonviral gene vectors depending on the target tissue. In this particular study, hydrodynamic tail-vein (HTV) injection of plasmid DNA was used to deliver the OKSM factors to mouse hepatocytes. This provided proof-of-evidence of in vivo reprogramming of adult, somatic cells towards a pluripotent state with high efficiency and fast kinetics. Furthermore no tumor or teratoma formation was observed in situ.
It can be concluded that reprogramming somatic cells in vivo may offer a potential approach to induce enhanced pluripotency rapidly, efficiently, and safely compared to in vitro performed protocols and can be applied to different tissue types in the future.

The blood brain barrier (BBB) specifically regulates molecular and cellular flux between the blood and the nervous tissue. Our aim was to develop and characterize a highly reproducible rat syngeneic in vitro model of the BBB using co-cultures of primary rat brain endothelial cells (RBEC) and astrocytes to study receptors involved in transcytosis across the endothelial cell monolayer. Astrocytes were isolated by mechanical dissection following trypsin digestion and were frozen for later co-culture. RBEC were isolated from 5-week-old rat cortices. The brains were cleaned of meninges and white matter, and mechanically dissociated following enzymatic digestion. Thereafter, the tissue homogenate was centrifuged in bovine serum albumin to separate vessel fragments from nervous tissue. The vessel fragments underwent a second enzymatic digestion to free endothelial cells from their extracellular matrix. The remaining contaminating cells such as pericytes were further eliminated by plating the microvessel fragments in puromycin-containing medium. They were then passaged onto filters for co-culture with astrocytes grown on the bottom of the wells. RBEC expressed high levels of tight junction (TJ) proteins such as occludin, claudin-5 and ZO-1 with a typical localization at the cell borders. The transendothelial electrical resistance (TEER) of brain endothelial monolayers, indicating the tightness of TJs reached 300 ohm·cm2 on average. The endothelial permeability coefficients (Pe) for lucifer yellow (LY) was highly reproducible with an average of 0.26 ± 0.11 x 10-3 cm/min. Brain endothelial cells organized in monolayers expressed the efflux transporter P-glycoprotein (P-gp), showed a polarized transport of rhodamine 123, a ligand for P-gp, and showed specific transport of transferrin-Cy3 and DiILDL across the endothelial cell monolayer. In conclusion, we provide a protocol for setting up an in vitro BBB model that is highly reproducible due to the quality assurance methods, and that is suitable for research on BBB transporters and receptors.

Mammalian cell culture is the major platform for commercial production of human vaccines and therapeutic proteins. However, it cannot meet the increasing worldwide demand for pharmaceuticals due to its limited scalability and high cost. Plants have shown to be one of the most promising alternative pharmaceutical production platforms that are robust, scalable, low-cost and safe. The recent development of virus-based vectors has allowed rapid and high-level transient expression of recombinant proteins in plants. To further optimize the utility of the transient expression system, we demonstrate a simple, efficient and scalable methodology to introduce target-gene containing Agrobacterium into plant tissue in this study. Our results indicate that agroinfiltration with both syringe and vacuum methods have resulted in the efficient introduction of Agrobacterium into leaves and robust production of two fluorescent proteins; GFP and DsRed. Furthermore, we demonstrate the unique advantages offered by both methods. Syringe infiltration is simple and does not need expensive equipment. It also allows the flexibility to either infiltrate the entire leave with one target gene, or to introduce genes of multiple targets on one leaf. Thus, it can be used for laboratory scale expression of recombinant proteins as well as for comparing different proteins or vectors for yield or expression kinetics. The simplicity of syringe infiltration also suggests its utility in high school and college education for the subject of biotechnology. In contrast, vacuum infiltration is more robust and can be scaled-up for commercial manufacture of pharmaceutical proteins. It also offers the advantage of being able to agroinfiltrate plant species that are not amenable for syringe infiltration such as lettuce and Arabidopsis. Overall, the combination of syringe and vacuum agroinfiltration provides researchers and educators a simple, efficient, and robust methodology for transient protein expression. It will greatly facilitate the development of pharmaceutical proteins and promote science education.

Institutions: University of Wuerzburg, Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology, Martinsried, Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich.

Visualization of calcium dynamics is important to understand the role of calcium in cell physiology. To examine calcium dynamics, synthetic fluorescent Ca2+ indictors have become popular. Here we demonstrate TED (= targeted-esterase induced dye loading), a method to improve the release of Ca2+ indicator dyes in the ER lumen of different cell types. To date, TED was used in cell lines, glial cells, and neurons in vitro. TED bases on efficient, recombinant targeting of a high carboxylesterase activity to the ER lumen using vector-constructs that express Carboxylesterases (CES). The latest TED vectors contain a core element of CES2 fused to a red fluorescent protein, thus enabling simultaneous two-color imaging. The dynamics of free calcium in the ER are imaged in one color, while the corresponding ER structure appears in red. At the beginning of the procedure, cells are transduced with a lentivirus. Subsequently, the infected cells are seeded on coverslips to finally enable live cell imaging. Then, living cells are incubated with the acetoxymethyl ester (AM-ester) form of low-affinity Ca2+ indicators, for instance Fluo5N-AM, Mag-Fluo4-AM, or Mag-Fura2-AM. The esterase activity in the ER cleaves off hydrophobic side chains from the AM form of the Ca2+ indicator and a hydrophilic fluorescent dye/Ca2+ complex is formed and trapped in the ER lumen. After dye loading, the cells are analyzed at an inverted confocal laser scanning microscope. Cells are continuously perfused with Ringer-like solutions and the ER calcium dynamics are directly visualized by time-lapse imaging. Calcium release from the ER is identified by a decrease in fluorescence intensity in regions of interest, whereas the refilling of the ER calcium store produces an increase in fluorescence intensity. Finally, the change in fluorescent intensity over time is determined by calculation of ΔF/F0.

Institutions: Columbia University , Columbia University , University of Iowa , University of Iowa .

The loss of sight affects approximately 3.4 million people in the United States and is expected to increase in the upcoming years.1 Recently, gene therapy and stem cell transplantations have become key therapeutic tools for treating blindness resulting from retinal degenerative diseases. Several forms of autologous transplantation for age-related macular degeneration (AMD), such as iris pigment epithelial cell transplantation, have generated encouraging results, and human clinical trials have begun for other forms of gene and stem cell therapies.2 These include RPE65 gene replacement therapy in patients with Leber's congenital amaurosis and an RPE cell transplantation using human embryonic stem (ES) cells in Stargardt's disease.3-4 Now that there are gene therapy vectors and stem cells available for treating patients with retinal diseases, it is important to verify these potential therapies in animal models before applying them in human studies. The mouse has become an important scientific model for testing the therapeutic efficacy of gene therapy vectors and stem cell transplantation in the eye.5-8 In this video article, we present a technique to inject gene therapy vectors or stem cells into the subretinal space of the mouse eye while minimizing damage to the surrounding tissue.

Production of Lentiviral Vectors for Transducing Cells from the Central Nervous System

Authors: Mingjie Li, Nada Husic, Ying Lin, B. Joy Snider.

Institutions: Washington University School of Medicine.

Efficient gene delivery in the central nervous system (CNS) is important in studying gene functions, modeling neurological diseases and developing therapeutic approaches. Lentiviral vectors are attractive tools in transduction of neurons and other cell types in CNS as they transduce both dividing and non-dividing cells, support sustained expression of transgenes, and have relatively large packaging capacity and low toxicity 1-3. Lentiviral vectors have been successfully used in transducing many neural cell types in vitro4-6 and in animals 7-10.
Great efforts have been made to develop lentiviral vectors with improved biosafety and efficiency for gene delivery. The current third generation replication-defective and self-inactivating (SIN) lentiviral vectors are depicted in Figure 1. The required elements for vector packaging are split into four plasmids. In the lentiviral transfer plasmid, the U3 region in the 5' long terminal repeat (LTR) is replaced with a strong promoter from another virus. This modification allows the transcription of the vector sequence independent of HIV-1 Tat protein that is normally required for HIV gene expression 11. The packaging signal (Ψ) is essential for encapsidation and the Rev-responsive element (RRE) is required for producing high titer vectors. The central polypurine tract (cPPT) is important for nuclear import of the vector DNA, a feature required for transducing non-dividing cells 12. In the 3' LTR, the cis-regulatory sequences are completely removed from the U3 region. This deletion is copied to 5' LTR after reverse transcription, resulting in transcriptional inactivation of both LTRs. Plasmid pMDLg/pRRE contains HIV-1 gag/pol genes, which provide structural proteins and reverse transcriptase. pRSV-Rev encodes Rev which binds to the RRE for efficient RNA export from the nucleus. pCMV-G encodes the vesicular stomatitis virus glycoprotein (VSV-G) that replaces HIV-1 Env. VSV-G expands the tropism of the vectors and allows concentration via ultracentrifugation 13. All the genes encoding the accessory proteins, including Vif, Vpr, Vpu, and Nef are excluded in the packaging system. The production and manipulation of lentiviral vectors should be carried out according to NIH guidelines for research involving recombinant DNA (http://oba.od.nih.gov/oba/rac/Guidelines/NIH_Guidelines.pdf). An approval from individual Institutional Biological and Chemical Safety Committee may be required before using lentiviral vectors. Lentiviral vectors are commonly produced by cotransfection of 293T cells with lentiviral transfer plasmid and the helper plasmids encoding the proteins required for vector packaging. Many lentiviral transfer plasmids and helper plasmids can be obtained from Addgene, a non-profit plasmid repository (http://www.addgene.org/). Some stable packaging cell lines have been developed, but these systems provide less flexibility and their packaging efficiency generally declines over time 14, 15. Commercially available transfection kits may support high efficiency of transfection 16, but they can be very expensive for large scale vector preparations. Calcium phosphate precipitation methods provide highly efficient transfection of 293T cells and thus provide a reliable and cost effective approach for lentiviral vector production.
In this protocol, we produce lentiviral vectors by cotransfection of 293T cells with four plasmids based on the calcium phosphate precipitation principle, followed by purification and concentration with ultracentrifugation through a 20% sucrose cushion. The vector titers are determined by fluorescence- activated cell sorting (FACS) analysis or by real time qPCR. The production and titration of lentiviral vectors in this protocol can be finished with 9 days. We provide an example of transducing these vectors into murine neocortical cultures containing both neurons and astrocytes. We demonstrate that lentiviral vectors support high efficiency of transduction and cell type-specific gene expression in primary cultured cells from CNS.

Stem and tumor cell biology studies often require viral transduction of human cells with known or suspected oncogenes, raising major safety issues for laboratory personnel. Pantropic lentiviruses, such as the commonly used VSV-G pseudotype, are a valuable tool for studying gene function because they can transduce many cell types, including non-dividing cells. However, researchers may wish to avoid production and centrifugation of pantropic viruses encoding oncogenes due to higher biosafety level handling requirements and safety issues. Several potent oncogenes, including c-Myc and SV40 large T antigen, are known to enhance production of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC). All other known iPSC-inducing genetic changes (OCT4, SOX2, KLF4, NANOG, LIN28, and p53 loss of function) also have links to cancer, making them of relatively high safety concern as well.
While these cancer-related viruses are useful in studying cellular reprogramming and pluripotency, they must be used safely. To address these biosafety issues, we demonstrate a method for transduction of human cells with ecotropic lentivirus, with additional emphasis on reduced cost and convenient handling. We have produced ecotropic lentivirus with sufficiently high titer to transduce greater than 90% of receptor-expressing human cells exposed to the virus, validating the efficacy of this approach.
Lentivirus is often concentrated by ultracentrifugation; however, this process takes several hours and can produce aerosols infectious to human biomedical researchers. As an alternative, viral particles can be more safely sedimented onto cells by complexation with chondroitin sulfate and polybrene (CS/PB). This technique increases the functional viral titer up to 3-fold in cells stably expressing murine retrovirus receptor, with negligible added time and cost. Transduction of human dermal fibroblasts (HDFs) is maximally enhanced using CS/PB concentrations approximately 4-fold lower than the optimal value previously reported for cancer cell lines, suggesting that polymer concentration should be titrated for the target cell type of interest. We therefore describe the use of methylthiazolyldiphenyl-tetrazolium bromide (MTT) to assay for polymer toxicity in a new cell type. We observe equivalent viability of HDFs after viral transduction using either polymer complexation or the standard dose of polybrene (PB, 6 μg/ml), indicating minimal acute toxicity.
In this protocol, we describe the use of ecotropic lentivirus for overexpression of oncogenes in human cells, reducing biosafety risks and increasing the transduction rate. We also demonstrate the use of polymer complexation to enhance transduction while avoiding aerosol-forming centrifugation of viral particles.

Retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) are CNS neurons that output visual information from the retina to the brain, via the optic nerve. The optic nerve can be accessed within the orbit of the eye and completely transected (axotomized), cutting the axons of the entire RGC population. Optic nerve transection is a reproducible model of apoptotic neuronal cell death in the adult CNS 1-4. This model is particularly attractive because the vitreous chamber of the eye acts as a capsule for drug delivery to the retina, permitting experimental manipulations via intraocular injections. The diffusion of chemicals through the vitreous fluid ensures that they act upon the entire RGC population. Viral vectors, plasmids or short interfering RNAs (siRNAs) can also be delivered to the vitreous chamber in order to infect or transfect retinal cells 5-12. The high tropism of Adeno-Associated Virus (AAV) vectors is beneficial to target RGCs, with an infection rate approaching 90% of cells near the injection site 6, 7, 13-15. Moreover, RGCs can be selectively transfected by applying siRNAs, plasmids, or viral vectors to the cut end of the optic nerve 16-19 or injecting vectors into their target the superior colliculus 10. This allows researchers to study apoptotic mechanisms in the injured neuronal population without confounding effects on other bystander neurons or surrounding glia. RGC apoptosis has a characteristic time-course whereby cell death is delayed 3-4 days postaxotomy, after which the cells rapidly degenerate. This provides a window for experimental manipulations directed against pathways involved in apoptosis. Manipulations that directly target RGCs from the transected optic nerve stump are performed at the time of axotomy, immediately after cutting the nerve. In contrast, when substances are delivered via an intraocular route, they can be injected prior to surgery or within the first 3 days after surgery, preceding the initiation of apoptosis in axotomized RGCs. In the present article, we demonstrate several methods for experimental manipulations after optic nerve transection.

Institutions: University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey - UMDNJ, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey - UMDNJ.

There is a recognized demand for in vitro models that can replace or reduce animal experiments. Porcine retina has a similar neuronal structure to human retina and is therefore a valuable species for studying mechanisms of human retinal injury and degenerative disease. Here we describe a cost-effective technique for organotypic culture of adult porcine retina isolated from eyes obtained from an abattoir. After removing the anterior segment, a trephine blade was used to create multiple neural retina-Bruch's membrane-RPE-choroid-sclera explants from the posterior segment of adult porcine eyes. A piece of sterile filter paper was used to lift the neural retina off from each explant. The filter paper-retina complex was cultured (photoreceptor side up) atop an insert, which was held away from the bottom of the culture dish by a custom-made stand. The stand allows for good circulation of the culture medium to both sides of the retina. Overall, this procedure is simple, reproducible, and permits preservation of native retinal structure for at least seven days, making it a useful model for a variety of morphological, pharmacological, and biochemical studies on mammalian retina.

Neuroscience, Issue 49, Retina, in vitro, Porcine, Photoreceptor

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Intracranial Injection of Adeno-associated Viral Vectors

Authors: Rebecca L. Lowery, Ania K. Majewska.

Institutions: University of Rochester.

Intracranial injection of viral vectors engineered to express a fluorescent protein is a versatile labeling technique for visualization of specific subsets of cells in different brain regions both in vivo and in brain sections. Unlike the injection of fluorescent dyes, viral labeling offers targeting of individual cell types and is less expensive and time consuming than establishing transgenic mouse lines. In this technique, an adeno-associated viral (AAV) vector is injected intracranially using stereotaxic coordinates, a micropipette and an automated pump for precise delivery of AAV to the desired area with minimal damage to the surrounding tissue. Injection parameters can be tailored to individual experiments by adjusting the animal age at injection, injection location, volume of injection, rate of injection, AAV serotype and the promoter driving gene expression. Depending on the conditions chosen, virally-induced transgene expression can allow visualization of groups of cells, individual cells or fine cellular processes, down to the level of dendritic spines. The experiment shown here depicts an injection of double-stranded AAV expressing green fluorescent protein for the labeling of neurons and glia in the mouse primary visual cortex.

Targeted Expression of GFP in the Hair Follicle Using Ex Vivo Viral Transduction

Authors: Robert M. Hoffman, Lingna Li.

Institutions: AntiCancer, Inc..

There are many cell types in the hair follicle, including hair matrix cells which form the hair shaft and stem cells which can initiate the hair shaft during early anagen, the growth phase of the hair cycle, as well as pluripotent stem cells that play a role in hair follicle growth but have the potential to differentiate to non-follicle cells such as neurons. These properties of the hair follicle are discussed. The various cell types of the hair follicle are potential targets for gene therapy. Gene delivery system for the hair follicle using viral vectors or liposomes for gene targeting to the various cell types in the hair follicle and the results obtained are also discussed.

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